Anti-Asian Violence and Abolition Feminism as Asian American Feminist Praxis

Anti-Asian Violence and Abolition Feminism as Asian American Feminist Praxis

Bao Lo

Anti-Asian violence during the pandemic has been largely framed by mainstream media as an individual response to the pandemic and reduces anti-Asian violence to “hate” toward Asians, therefore justifying increased use of law enforcement and carceral punishment of individuals committing hate incidents. Additionally, some members of the Asian American community advocate for policy changes and collection of hate crimes statistics that rely more on carceral punishment. Other members of the Asian American community argue that hate crime statistics and legislation do not provide systemic changes necessary to address anti-Asian violence. Specically, Asian American abolition feminists are challenging mainstream narratives that isolate violence to conversations of racism alone and calling for the abolition of the carceral system that is historically and inherently responsible for violence against Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) communities and women. This paper addresses carceral solutions to anti-Asian violence and the opportunities of abolition feminism as an Asian American feminist praxis to challenge violence against Asian Americans. Focusing on survivor-led movements and responses to violence in its multiple forms, I discuss how abolition feminism may be necessary for redressing anti-Asian violence. I also consider how Asian American abolition feminism can achieve truly liberating, transformative solutions and healing to violence through an abolitionist and decolonial feminist praxis that centers and engages with Indigenous Paci c Islander communities.

Keywords: Abolition Feminist / Anti-Asian violence / Asian American Feminism

©2023 Feminist Formations, Vol. 35 No. 1 (Spring) pp. 221–239

“With heavy hearts, we call our community together to mourn the eight lives lost during the shooting on Tuesday night in Atlanta. As we pay honor to the individual victims and send our support to the survivors, it is undeniable that this was a targeted violence against Asian Women Massage Workers. As Asian massage and sex workers, we wish to hold a space of radical love and healing for our shared communities.”

Red Canary Song Vigil for 8 Lives Lost in Atlanta Shooting, 2021

After the Atlanta shooting in March 2021, I was reminded of the trauma I experienced from the Stockton shooting and massacre of Southeast Asian American children at an elementary school. In 1989, a 24-year-old white male opened re on an elementary school campus in Stockton, California during recess when hundreds of children were playing. The shooting resulted in thirty wounded and ve young children of Cambodian and Vietnamese descent killed (Escalante 2019). The assailant, Patrick Purdy, targeted children of Southeast Asian immigrants, who were resettled in this country after the Vietnam War and formed communities in cities such as Stockton (Arellano 2021). Growing up in Stockton, I remember this horrible atrocity as I was eleven years old then and attending an elementary school. At the time, I did not think that this was a racially motivated incident, although the reason the assailant shot and targeted Southeast Asian children was due to his fears that they were coming in hordes and taking over his city, re ecting the history of xenophobia against Asia and Asian Americans. After the school shooting, I remember feeling shame, confusion, and uneasiness about the targeting and killing of the Southeast Asian children, as I was around the same age and of the same background. At the same time that I was afraid that this could happen again and that I could be the next target, I also felt ashamed and could not understand why Americans did not like us and would want to kill us. As a child, I also remember students calling me “Gook” in elementary school, but I did not understand its reference to anti-Vietnamese and anti-Asian sentiment, particularly as many Southeast Asian refugees and their children resettled in signi cant numbers in the 1980s throughout the country after the Vietnam War.

Violence has always been part of our lives and underlies the systems that connect our experiences. As a child of Hmong refugees, I was born in a Thailand refugee camp and came to the United States at a young age. Due to their involvement during the Vietnam War as US allies, Hmong refugees were largely resettled in the United States and began arriving in the mid-1970s. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recruited the Hmong people of Laos as war allies during the Vietnam War. They became targets of genocide for aiding the United States after the Vietnam War ended. American political interests and military

intervention in the Vietnam War were driven by the containment policy of the Cold War (Chan 1994, 23). After the communists took over Laos in 1975, the United States pulled out of Laos and evacuated about 12,000 –15,000 Hmong to refugee camps in Thailand. However, the majority ed on their own. Like other Southeast Asian refugees, Hmong people were brought to the United States by war and US imperialism and militarization (Espiritu 2014). After our community was settled here, the country continued to in ict violence against our communities through its declaration of war on our communities using state sanctioned violence such as criminalization and incarceration (Tang 2015; Lo 2018). Violence is broader than the interpersonal and needs to be critically understood and connected with other forms of oppression such as US imperialism and empire, war, militarization, racism, settler colonialism, and heteropatriarchy.

Anti-Asian violence during the pandemic has been largely framed by mainstream media as an individual response to the pandemic and reduces antiAsian violence to “hate” toward Asians, therefore justifying increased use of law enforcement and carceral punishment of individuals committing hate incidents. Additionally, some members of the Asian American community advocate for policy changes and collection of hate crimes statistics that rely more on carceral punishment. Other members of the Asian American community argue that hate crime statistics and legislation do not provide systemic changes necessary to address anti-Asian violence. Speci cally, Asian American abolition feminists are challenging mainstream narratives that isolate violence to conversations of racism alone and calling for the abolition of the carceral system that is historically and inherently responsible for violence against Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) communities and women. This paper addresses carceral solutions to anti-Asian violence and the opportunities of abolition feminism as an Asian American feminist praxis to challenge violence against Asian Americans. Focusing on survivor-led movements and responses to violence in its multiple forms, I discuss how Asian American feminism connects with abolition feminism to address questions such as: How can anti-Asian violence be understood through the perspectives of Asian American abolition feminism? How is abolition feminism necessary for redressing anti-Asian violence? Looking forward, I consider how Asian American abolition feminism can achieve truly liberating, transformative solutions and healing to violence through an abolitionist and decolonial feminist praxis that centers and engages with Indigenous Paci c Islander communities.

Carceral Solutions to Anti-Asian Violence

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian violence has been on the rise and garnered national attention. Between March 19, 2020, and June 30, 2021, the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center has documented 9,081 hate

incidents. From April to June 2021, the number of hate incidents increased from 6,603 to 9,081. Additionally, 63.3 percent of all reports are hate incidents experienced by women (Yellow Horse et al. 2021). A recent report, “The Rising Tide of Violence and Discrimination Against Asian American and Paci c Islander Women and Girls,” shows that AAPI women and girls have experienced hate incidents 2.2 times more than AAPI men between March 2020 and March 2021. Additionally, nonbinary people have reported increased experiences of hate incidents. The numbers are suspected to be much higher as many of these incidents are not reported. The data also reveals that these hate incidents are based on race, ethnicity, and gender (Pillai, Yellow Horse, and Jeung 2021). On March 16, 2021, anti-Asian violence escalated to the shooting and death of six Asian women in Atlanta, Georgia. A 21-year-old white male shot and killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women (Aspegren, Miller, and Hayes 2021). With the national spotlight on anti-Asian violence, solutions have focused largely on government initiatives and hate crimes legislation that increase carceral punishment. The Biden administration re-established the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Paci c Islanders, established originally under the Obama administration, to respond to anti-Asian violence. Additionally, President Biden signed Senate Bill 937, the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, into law on May 20, 2021 (Sprunt 2021). The bill designates the Department of Justice to expedite review of hate crimes, provide guidance for law enforcement agencies on processes for hate crime reporting, collecting disaggregated data, expanding educational campaigns, and raising awareness of hate crimes during COVID19. The bill also provides grants for state-run hate crimes reporting hotlines, implementation of the National Incident-Based Reporting, and law enforcement activities or crime reduction programs. The bill allows for a court to order an individual convicted of a hate crime offense to participate in educational classes or community service as a condition of supervised release (Congress 2021). Even though the bill acknowledges the rise of hate incidents against Asian Americans during the pandemic, some members of the community argue that the bill does little to address systemic racism that subjects Asian Americans to racial violence in the rst place (Yan 2021). Instead, the bill mainly increases the power and authority of law enforcement to police communities of color and creates division between Black and brown allies (Chalermkraivuth and Sharma 2021).

With scarce data reported by local and national government agencies, the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center has been at the forefront of collecting hate incidents to advocate for policy changes since March 2020 (Asher 2021). The Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center is a collaborative effort of community organizations and university researchers to increase crime statistics collection. At the beginning of the pandemic, the center relied on news reports to identify hate incidents and found that there was a correlation between xenophobia and the rise of hate incidents against Asian communities globally and nationally (Takasaki 2020, 344). The center also highlights that the scapegoating of China, or

blaming Chinese people and China for the coronavirus, constituted 48 percent of the total hate incident reports (Yellow Horse et al. 2021, 1). With its success to track the trends of hate incidents against Asian Americans, the center has garnered both local and national attention. Takasaki (2020) explains that the success of the center is due to the collective effort of community organizations and the prioritizing of community needs.

The Asian American community has also formed community foot patrols to respond to anti-Asian violence during the pandemic. As attacks against Asian Americans surged throughout the Bay Area in early 2021, community volunteers started patrolling the streets of San Francisco and Oakland’s Chinatown to protect community members and businesses and help report hate incidents to the local police (Smith 2021; NBC Bay Area Staff 2021). During the lunar celebrations of February 2021, community volunteers have been helping the police patrol Oakland Chinatown, where community residents and businesses have been a prime target of anti-Asian violence during the pandemic. More volunteer groups have formed in other cities such as Seattle and New York to patrol Asian American communities (Chavez and Kopp 2021). In the summer of 2021, the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce called on Governor Newsom for more policing and law enforcement to address anti-Asian violence in the bay area (Colorado 2021). Community members and business owners are also advocating for more police and express that “they feel safer with more police” (Ho 2021). Advocates of policy changes and heavier reliance on carceral punishment believe that the system can be reformed to work for marginalized communities. However, hate crime statistics and legislation, policing, and crime control may not provide the systemic changes necessary to address anti-Asian violence. Kuo and Bui (2021) argue that hate crimes data collection and police data surveillance are carceral data that contribute to narratives that justify the incarceration of communities of color and enact further violence. Therefore, “law enforcement and police data are not the solution for safety nor for redressing anti-Asian violence” (Kuo and Bui 2021, 6).

The reduction of anti-Asian violence to “hate” toward Asians have also normalized the use of law enforcement and carceral punishment of individuals committing hate incidents, speci cally communities of color (Rodriguez 2021). Anti-Asian violence during the pandemic has been largely framed as “an individual response of hate and blame of a group for the pandemic.” For example, many news reports isolated hate incidents and sought the personal motivations behind one person’s actions (Takasaki 2020, 347). Additionally, mainstream news reporting is framing the stories of hate incidents against Asian Americans as “horri c attacks” by perpetrators who are people of color that hold anti-Asian sentiment. For instance, a Latino male stabbed an Asian American family in Texas because of his fear and association of the Chinese with COVID-19 (Ramirez 2020). In February of 2021, a Black male was arrested for aggravated assault of an elder of Asian descent in San Francisco (Lah and

Kravarik 2021). These mainstream news reports pit marginalized groups against each other and deepens the racial divide that upholds systemic racism and white supremacy (Kim 1999).

Carceral solutions to anti-Asian violence perpetuate the carceral state as “safe” and “protecting” and rely on policing and punishment to resolve violence. Carceral responses have also minimized gender-based violence and criminalized victims of the massage parlor in the Atlanta shooting of March 2021. Additionally, carceral strategies re ect the failures of the mainstream antiviolence feminist movement such as carceral feminism to account for the systemic ways women of color experience violence. Carceral feminism emerged from the anti-violence movement of the 1960s that was fundamentally radical (Kim 2018). However, as the movement gained mainstream recognition and support alongside the growth of neoliberalism of the 1970s, feminist reformist strategies reinforced punishment and crime control by the state (Bumiller 2008). Based on a white middle-class perspective, carceral feminism ignores the impact of state violence on poor, working-class women of color (Law 2018). With its pro-criminalization stance, carceral feminism reduces gender violence as interpersonal and relies on the carceral state to punish the individuals that commit the violence. For instance, carceral feminism engages with systems and depends on state resources that individualize violence and control and punish crime such as policing, prosecution, incarceration (Kim 2020; Terwiel 2020; Heiner and Tyson 2017). As scholar activist Angela Davis explains, carceral feminism led to “an overly simplistic carceral analysis that promoted policing and prisons as solutions” (Davis et al. 2022, 90). The reliance on the carceral state dismisses how state violence produces and reinforces gender violence (Davis et al. 2022, 122). The use of carceral strategies to resolve gender violence leads to more criminalization of marginalized groups.

Abolition feminism challenges carceral feminism and its pro-criminalization stance and lack of attention to working-class women of color. Rooted in community-based responses, community accountability, and transformative justice, abolition feminism promotes an anti-violence and anti-carceral politics that can transform society beyond reforming the current system (Davis et al. 2022). Abolition feminism aims to end all forms of violence including interpersonal and state violence and questions the safety and protection of the carceral state. Within this framework, Asian American abolition feminists are addressing anti-Asian violence that moves beyond carceral solutions.

Abolition Feminism as Asian American Feminist Praxis

Abolition feminism builds from research and organizing that center women of color in anti-violence and anti-prison movements. In a collective commitment to guaranteeing the survival of all people, INCITE! and Critical Resistance developed a statement in 2001 that brings together the abolition movement

and women of color feminist politics. The statement calls for community-based approaches to violence that do not depend on carceral systems and logics, opposition to legislation that promotes prison expansion, connecting interpersonal and state violence, the centering working-class women of color in the analysis, organizing practices, and leadership development of anti-violence and anti-prison movements, and the centering of state violence committed against women of color in organizing efforts (Critical Resistance and INCITE! 2003). Scholar activist Angela Davis argues that abolition and feminism are inseparable, as the core of the abolitionist movement of the 1990s that led to the formation of Critical Resistance was feminism. As Davis expresses, “abolition must be feminist and feminism must be abolitionist” (Davis et al. 2022, ix). Thus, abolition feminism bridges abolitionist and feminist politic and praxis and connects state and interpersonal violence and the resistance movements to end violence in these multiple forms. For instance, organizing work to end gender violence must also work to end the prison industrial complex (Davis et al. 2022, x). Davis explains that if the process of criminalization was used to punish gender violence, then this would only strengthen the structural racism that was responsible for incarcerating people of color (Center for Race and Gender 2020). Abolition feminism demands institutional change such as the dismantling of carceral systems, while creating community practices of safety, accountability, and healing that do not engage the carceral state.

Abolition feminism has been the underlying framework for organizing against gender and state violence. For instance, as a national radical feminist of color organization dedicated to ending interpersonal and state violence, INCITE! formed over twenty years ago to mobilize women of color against violence (INCITE!, n.d.). With its grassroots anti-violence organizing with women, trans and gender-nonconforming people of color, INCITE! has been at the forefront of abolitionist feminist praxis, which envisions and works toward a world free from all forms of violence including gender and state violence (INCITE! 2020). INCITE! has been especially important for challenging feminist politics that engage the carceral state to address gender violence (Davis et al. 2022, 78). Additionally, Critical Resistance has paved the path for contemporary anti-prison activism. After the 1998 conference that brought people together to strategize against a booming prison population of the 1980s and 1990s, Critical Resistance was established as a national organization in 2001 Through protests, campaigns, advocacy, and movement building, Critical Resistance has been instrumental in shifting the focus on prison reform to prison abolition. Critical Resistance popularized the concept of the “prison industrial complex” to denaturalize crime and punishment and broaden an understanding of incarceration as solutions to social, political, and economic problems. Focusing on women of color experiences with incarceration, the leadership of feminist activist and scholars of Critical Resistance has been essential in connecting state and interpersonal violence (Davis et al. 2022, 34–35).

As a theoretical frame, abolition feminism is important for centering the experiences of women of color in scholarship on criminalization, incarceration, and policing. As Black women have been made invisible in these academic conversations, Black feminists demanded action to center Black women’s experiences. Black feminist activist Beth E. Ritchie (2012) provides an intersectional analysis of gender and state violence against Black women to expose the multiple forms of abuse these women experience. Ritchie critiques the anti-violence movement that has gained visibility and credibility in the mainstream at the expense of making Black women susceptible to state violence produced from carceral institutions and logic that punish gender violence. Black feminist and antiviolence activist Andrea J. Ritchie (2017) also centers Black, Indigenous, and women of color experiences in broader discourses of police violence, criminalization, and incarceration. For instance, Ritchie shows how police responses to domestic and sexual violence against women of color has led to increased police violence against women of color. The reliance on law enforcement as solutions to domestic and sexual violence produces police violence against women of color that include verbal abuse, physical violence, refusal to respond, and even death (Ritchie 2017, 186).

Violence targeting Asian Americans during the pandemic has led to clashing Asian American responses such as hate crimes statistics and legislation that rely more on the carceral state versus feminist abolitionist strategies. Since the Atlanta shooting in March of 2021 targeting Asian women, Asian American abolition feminists have become more visible in challenging carceral solutions that are fundamentally and historically anti-black and anti-Indigenous and criminalizes and punishes labor such as sex work. As survivors of violence, Asian American abolition feminists are challenging their marginalization and invisibility of mainstream narratives and the Asian American community, as well as the failures and complicity of the state and criminal justice in perpetuating violence in their lives. As such, they are calling for the abolition of the carceral system that is historically and inherently responsible for violence against BIPOC communities and women. Through their experiences, they see the connections between interpersonal and state violence and are organizing at the intersections of violence and abolition that move the conversation of anti-Asian violence beyond “hate.” As abolitionist and scholar activist Dylan Rodriguez (2021) explains, an abolitionist analysis depersonalizes anti-Asian violence and dialogues with other forms of state violence such as gentri cation, redlining, deportation, and the criminalization of sex work. Employing an abolition feminist framework based on radical feminism, Black solidarity, and anti-carcerality, while also centering sex workers, migrants, and refugees, these women are pushing a more complex framing of anti-Asian violence that goes beyond “hate” (Rodriguez 2021). Asian American abolition feminism also makes visible and challenges the failure of the state to support women who are victims of violence as well as the violence inherent in the institutions that are supposed to protect women (Davis et al. 2022, 131).

Asian American feminists and community organizers have been calling for the abolishing of systems of criminalization and punishment that contribute to anti-Asian violence and anti-Blackness. Using online blogging, Asian American Feminist Collective (AAFC), established as a response to the exclusion and tokenism of women of color speci cally Asian American women during the Women’s March on Washington in 2017, denounces carceral solutions to anti-Asian violence and calls for the abolition of systems that expand criminalization and punishment such as the police, prison, and military complex. Instead, AAFC advocates for community interventions and responses to anti-Asian violence (Asian American Feminist Collective 2020a). Similarly, Asians4Abolition, a coalition of organizers and activists in the New York City community, advocates for anti-carceral solutions such as mutual aid and community care to address anti-Asian violence. Asians4Abolition states that the systems which are supposed to protect and serve justice are the perpetrators of violence and have taken signi cant lives from the Asian American community (Asians4Abolition 2021). Utilizing the support of various organizations to sign onto a collective statement, Asian American abolition feminists reject increased policing. In their statement with over three hundred signatures of community organizations, Red Canary Song calls for an intersectional, feminist perspective on anti-Asian violence and problematize the criminalization of sex work that harms Asian massage workers. (Red Canary Song, n.d.). After the passage of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, over seventyve organizations signed a statement that opposes the legislation and its reliance on law enforcement to address anti-Asian violence during the pandemic. The statement calls for systemic change that addresses the root causes of anti-Asian violence and solidarity with BIPOC communities against criminalization and mass incarceration. The demands include opposing the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, shifting resources from law enforcement to communities, designating hate incidents as a public health issue, and rejecting proposals that rely on policing and punishment as a response to anti-Asian violence (GAPIMNY 2021).

Asian American abolition feminists have also made themselves more visible through events and webinars. After the Atlanta shooting, Red Canary Song, a grassroots massage worker coalition, held a vigil to honor and name the victims that were diminished from mainstream news reporting (Red Canary Song 2021). Recently, Red Canary Song organized a memorial vigil with Asian American Feminist Collective to remember the eight lives lost in the Atlanta shooting. The event brought together sex worker rights activists, abolitionists, labor organizers, and allies to mourn and stand strong with Asian American abolition feminists against gender and sexual violence (Red Canary Song 2022).

Asian American Feminist Collective also organized a webinar with 18 Million Rising, a digital community that mobilizes young Asian Americans toward the collective liberation of marginalized communities, to advance conversations on abolition feminism and transformative justice in Asian American feminist politics (Asian American Feminist Collective 2020b).

The webinar, “Beyond #StopAsianHate: Criminalization, Gender, and Asian Abolition Feminism,” provides the stories of four Asian American women who are taking an abolitionist stance against anti-Asian violence (Haymarket Books 2021). Yves Tong Nguyen, a queer Vietnamese sex worker became involved in organizing that intersects anti-violence and abolition, since she is criminalized as a sex worker and sees how the criminal and legal system fails people. As a survivor of violence, Yves now organizes with Survived and Punished of NY, an af liate of Survived & Punished (S&P), a national grassroots coalition of organizers from the Stand With Nan-Hui defense campaign, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Love & Protect (then known as Chicago Alliance to Free Marissa Alexander), and the national Free Marissa Now Mobilization Campaign. Founded in 2016, S&P organizes to support survivors of domestic and sexual violence, free criminalized survivors, and abolish gender violence, policing, prisons, and deportations (Survived & Punished, n.d.).

Hyejin Shem, a queer Korean organizer and cofounder of S&P, explains that she became involved with organizing that intersects anti-violence and abolition due to violence within her own family, including multiple generations of war, domestic violence, and sexual and child abuse. In the process of guring out her sexuality, she started working with immigrant and refugee survivors of violence who were primarily trans and queer in San Francisco. In her organizing, she learned about abolition and her work with survivors of domestic violence such as the victims being punished by the system for actions such as being charged with child abduction that take them out of the violent environment. Survivors were faced with harsh punishment by the system for doing what they needed to do to survive. She realized that her work with survivors of violence was connected to the abolition movement of systems that also punished survivors of violence.

Coming from a Cambodian family of war refugees and history with genocide, Ny Nourn expresses how she was born into violence and witnessed domestic violence from a young age. As a formerly incarcerated domestic violence survivor, she thought the system would protect her but instead it in icted violence toward her, particularly by the courts. After serving 16 years in prison, she was immediately detained by ICE and through community advocacy she was granted a pardon that prevented her from being deported. Ny’s involvement in organizing against violence and prisons started when she was incarcerated in the largest women’s prison in the world. As she only saw Black and Brown women, she organized while incarcerated to free survivors of violence and to dismantle systems that targeted immigrants, refugees, and BIPOC communities. Ny is currently co-director of Asian Prisoner Support Committee, which provides support to Asian and Paci c Islander (API) prisoners and raises awareness about API incarceration and deportation (Asian Prisoner Support Committee, n.d.). Similarly, Connie Wun comes from a Vietnamese family of war refugees. As she faced racial and gender violence at a young age, she began organizing when she was in college. With family members who have been incarcerated, she

saw herself and the Southeast Asian community aligning themselves with the abolition movement. Connie was involved with the abolition movement in the 1990s that led to the creation of Critical Resistance and she also organized in the Bay Area with INCITE!. Currently, Connie is co-founder of AAPI Women Lead, which aims to end violence in AAPI communities in solidarity with other communities of color (AAPI Women Lead, n.d.). She has been an educator, researcher, writer, and organizer working on issues of racial and gender violence for over 25 years (Haymarket Books 2021). After the Atlanta shooting, Connie appeared on Democracy Now!, an independent news show, to contextualize the incident within the larger history of sexual violence against Asian women and to frame this violence as systemic (Democracy Now! 2021).

Asian American feminists are organizing with anti-violence and abolitionist movements to address violence in its various forms. Through their experiences with violence including domestic violence, policing and prisons, immigrant detention, and war and militarism, the four Asian American women became involved with the abolitionist movement. As Asian American abolitionist organizers, they believe anti-Asian violence should be understood within an abolitionist framework in order to achieve collective liberation from systems that produce violence. As they are impacted by the same criminal legal system that punishes and divests in communities of color, Asian American abolition feminists see that gender-based violence is connected to state violence. Their stories show that the criminal legal system does not protect women of color and further endangers victims and survivors of violence. Asian American abolition feminists also want solutions that support collective healing and liberation of marginalized communities. However, given the national framing and understanding of anti-Asian violence as second marginalization of Asian Americans as “the threat of disease” within a heteronormative white America, Asian American abolition feminists are challenged by the heteronormative nationalism of Asian Americans who call for resolutions and policy reform, a validation from the state that further rationalizes the use of carceral punishment of crimes committed. Smith (2011) explains that racial justice premised on secondary marginalization takes on “a nation-state model of governance through violence and dominance that maintains rather than challenges colonialism and white supremacy”. As the rise in hate incidents escalated to the Atlanta shooting of March 2021 that targeted Asian American women, Asian American feminists and organizers are pushing the conversation on anti-Asian violence that centers on race and racism alone. Asian American abolition feminism challenges antiAsian violence in ways that do not depend on the carceral state.

Asian American abolition feminism offers an Asian American feminist praxis that moves beyond Asian American visibility and incorporation in the nation-state. As producers of intersectional feminist scholarship, Asian American feminists along with other women of color feminists challenge white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. Asian American women formed alliances with

other women of color nationally and globally and established Third World feminism to challenge the women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s that centered on white feminism. Additionally, Asian American women are understudied in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, as well as Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies. Multilayered and complex, Asian American feminisms have consisted of radical and liberal strategies, which have been at odds with one another. Radical Asian American feminists embraced socialist Asian women from Vietnam, China, and North Korea as political role models toward liberation and decolonization, whereas liberal Asian American feminists sought for inclusion and visibility in the nation-state (Wu 2018). Asian American abolition feminism continues the radical traditions of Asian American feminisms and moves the national attention and responses to anti-Asian violence beyond Asian American visibility and recognition by the nation-state. Scholar Shireen Roshanravan (2018) suggests an Asian American feminist praxis of coalitional visibility such as Asian-Black solidarity to refuse and disrupt the nation-state. Similarly, feminist scholar Lynn Fujiwara (2018) suggests an Asian American feminist praxis based on multiplicity (incommensurable, differing, and con icted positionalities) to build coalitions with other women of color feminists and challenge invisibility in white feminist politics. The framework of multiplicity “enacts a form of solidarity that simultaneously recognizes Asian Americans as racially privileged vis-à-vis Black Americans and as racially subordinated by white supremacist foundations” (Fujiwara 2018, 258). For instance, Asian American Feminist Collective (AAFC) imagines an Asian American feminist politics that move “beyond the narrow bids for political and economic inclusion” in the nation-state and toward liberation from systems of power that position Asian Americans differently yet in relation to other communities of color (Asian American Feminist Collective 2018). Asian American abolition feminists are employing a framework of multiplicity to sustain solidarity with other communities of color as mainstream America and even members from the Asian American community call for more carceral solutions to anti-Asian violence. As radical Asian American feminism, Asian American abolition feminism sees the liberation of Asian Americans from violence as connected and shared with other communities of color, given violence in its multiple forms against women and communities of color are historical and inherent in the carceral systems that are supposedly about safety and protection.

Abolitionist and Decolonial Futures for Asian American Feminist Politics

Asian American feminists are adopting an abolitionist feminist approach to violence as they see their experiences and liberation from systems that produce violence connected and shared with other communities of color. Moving forward, Asian American abolition feminist politics may consider engaging more with colonial resistance against violence, speci cally with feminists from

Indigenous Paci c Islander communities, to achieve truly liberating, transformative solutions and healing to anti-Asian violence (Lugones 2012; Mack and Na’puti 2019; Teves and Arvin 2018). As Native Hawaiian feminist scholars Stephanie N. Teves and Maile Arvin (2018) explain, Asian American feminists should recognize and acknowledge the differences and con icts of their positions, such as the ways Asian American feminists participate in the erasure of Paci c Islanders. Although there is critique of US imperialism in Asian American feminist scholarship, Paci c Islanders are often left out of analyses of transnationalism and Asia-Paci c (Teves and Arvin 2018, 114). Teves and Arvin warn that the Asian Paci c Islander (API) category is a settler-colonial construct that diminishes Paci c Islanders and homogenizes the histories and experiences of these groups for inclusion into the nation-state (Teves and Arvin 2018, 120 –121). Asian American liberalism maintains settler colonialism, Indigenous dispossession, heteropatriarchy, and nation state governance and control (Trask 1999; Fujikane and Okamura 2008; Saranillo 2013). Thus, Indigenous perspectives should be centered in Asian American feminist politics that connect racism, colonialism, and gender. Asian American abolition feminist politics have the potential to build deep coalitions with Indigenous Paci c Islander communities to challenge anti-Asian violence in its multiple forms. As Hawaiian nationalist and feminist scholar Haunani-Kay Trask reminds us, Indigenous women leaders of the Paci c have always been at the heart of resistance against colonial violence (Trask 2016). Similarly, Native Hawaiian feminist Lisa K. Hall explains that “Native Hawaiian women have resisted the criminalization of sexuality and colonial ideas about sex and gender since the beginning of missionary contact to the present” (Hall 2009, 29).

Given shared visions, an abolitionist and decolonial feminist praxis might help us create truly liberating, transformative solutions and healing to anti-Asian violence. As Mack and Na’puti (2019) argue, decolonization is necessary in anti-violence movements as gendered violence needs to be understood as part of colonial violence that is an ongoing manifestation of US settler colonialism. Similar to abolition feminism, decolonial feminist strategies move us away from punitive responses that underly settler colonial and carceral logics and reject the reliance on the carceral state by the mainstream antiviolence movement (Heiner and Tyson 2017). For instance, Keys (2021) argues that a decolonial feminist praxis contextualizes violence through a colonial lens and challenge the ways the coloniality of race and gender construct Black women of color experiences of sexual and gender-based violence in the US. Mendez (2020) shows how dependency on state imposed policy such as Title IX that enforce “safety” and “protection” to address gender-based violence works to silence and deny survivors of color, queer, trans, and gender nonbinary of resources for healing. Instead, Mendez proposes a transformative justice approach as decolonial feminist praxis that builds community support and resources and healing for survivors. Similar to abolitionist philosophy, transformative justice

has “the well-being of humanity at its core” (Mendez 2020, 99). Additionally, Indigenous resistance to sexual violence that emphasize decolonization help us envision coalitional decolonial feminist possibilities (Mack and Na’puti 2019).

Abolition and decolonial feminisms also require epistemic delinking from systems of the colonial nation-state, such as the prison industrial complex. Abolition feminism critiques and connects the multiple forms of violence that is produced and punished by colonial state institutions seeks for social transformation rather than the reform of oppressive institutions. Decolonial feminisms offer critiques of Western hegemonic feminisms and an epidemic disobedience to coloniality (Martinez and Aguero 2021). For instance, feminist philosopher and activist Maria Lugones offers the possibility of change and liberation at the tension of colonial difference. In the space where the coloniality of power is enacted, Lugones sees a movement toward coalition that takes up the logic of decoloniality (Lugones 2012, 85). Decolonial feminism is the beginning or possibility of overcoming the coloniality of gender. Lugones argues that decolonial feminism is resistance to the coloniality of gender that allows us to understand and appreciate resistance beyond the self in relation to resisting. Decolonial feminisms exhibit feminisms that are resisting through an understanding of the colonial difference, multiplicity, and coalition at this point of difference (Lugones 2012, 84). Likewise, feminist scholar Andrea Smith (2011) advocates for Indigenous feminisms that centers anti-colonial theorizing and practice in feminist politics. Centering indigeneity and gender decolonizes white feminism and disciplines that promote recognition or inclusion in the colonial nation-state (Smith and Kauanui 2008; Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill 2013).

Abolitionist and decolonial feminist critiques provide more complex iterations of anti-Asian violence that go beyond “hate” and mainstream framings as an epidemic. Abolition and decolonial feminisms help us reimagine and create political and epistemological futures that can build and support the kinds of communities we envision. Abolitionist and decolonial possibilities exist in the spaces of marginalization that provide opportunity for us to create truly liberating, transformative solutions and healing.

Bao Lo is Associate Professor and Program Director of Asian American Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at California State University, Sacramento. Her research interests include contemporary race and racism, decolonization, settler colonialism, community organizing, student activism, and Asian American Studies, with a specialization in Hmong American Studies (email: lo@csus.edu).

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